CoAuthors

Tommaso Parrinello (ESA, Italy); Pierre Féménias (ESA, Italy)

The main objective of this paper is to give an overview of recent evolutions and quality assessment of the ESA CryoSat products; as well as to present the next processing algorithm upgrades. CryoSat is the first SAR/SARin altimeter concept to be flown on Earth with the main challenge to quantify how the thickness of the land ice and the floating sea-ice are changing. Beside its ice monitoring and climate objectives, CryoSat is also a highly valuable source of observations for the hydrological and oceanographic community as well as for operational polar services. The CryoSat data are operationally processed and analyzed by ESA both over ocean and ice surfaces with two independent processing chains following two different processing baselines. These data are routinely Quality-Controlled and thoroughly Validated (QCV). Based on the QCV results and feedback from the user community, the data products continuously evolve in order to accommodate a growing range of scientific users and operational services both over the Sea ice, the Land Ice, the Ocean and Inland domains.